About Me

After college and the army, I studied acting and theater; I have an MFA in Acting and uncompleted Ph.D. in Performance Studies (ABD). I have worked as an actor, director, dramaturg/literary advisor, critic/reviewer, essayist, editor, and teacher of theater and acting (studio/conservatory, college, high school, and middle school). Several years ago, some theater friends who don't live in New York anymore asked me to keep them informed about what I see and I began sending them detailed, opinionated e-mails.

30 July 2014

“I Think Icon, I Think Icon”

by Nelson Pressley

[The
following article appeared in the Washington Post on22
December 2013 in the “Arts” section (sec. E).Nelson Pressley is a review writer for the Post and previously reviewed for the Washington
Times. “I Think Icon, I Think Icon”
discusses the work of actors playing roles in three well-known musical
standards (Gypsy, A Funny Things
Happened on the Way to the Forum, and The
Kings and I) that a previous (and
renowned) performer made famous.Think
about playing Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady after Rex Harrison or Guinevere in Camelot following Julie Andrews.It can
be a daunting prospect—I, myself, have confessed that certain iconic roles are
always associated in my mind with specific performances I saw as a youngster
(see “A Broadway Baby,” 22 September 2010)—and Pressley interviewed three Washington-area
actors who took on just such a task.]

So, just how hard
is it for actors to play characters made famous by other actors?

Ways you can tell a stage role is for the ages:

An actor just won’t let go. Take Yul Brynner and “The
King and I”: From the premiere of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical in 1951
through national tours in the 1980s (“Et cetera, et cetera,” as the King of
Siam would say), he performed it 4,625 times.

The part is a prize magnet. In 1962, Zero Mostel won
a Tony Award as Pseudolus, the wily Roman slave in Stephen Sondheim’s musical
comedy “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” In 1972, so did Phil
Silvers. In 1996, so did Nathan Lane.

“Gypsy” also delivered a Tony trifecta, with the ferocious
Mama Rose paying off for Angela Lansbury in 1975, Tyne Daly in 1990, and Patti
LuPone in 2008. Bernadette Peters didn’t win in 2003 — but then neither did the
Mother of Them All, Ethel Merman, who originated the part in 1959.

All three musicals are currently on area stages, raising the
question: What can an actor do that’s new? How do performers cope with the long
shadows of movie versions, beloved cast albums, Broadway performances etched in
lore? After all, there are no purists like show purists, like no purists we
know . . .

“Anybody who plays that role is wrestling with the ghost of
Yul Brynner in audience’s heads,” says Paolo Montalban, the current King in the
Olney Theatre Center’s “The King and I.”

“People are obsessed with the hair thing,” director Mark
Waldrop says, meaning everyone wants to know: Will this king be as bald as
Brynner?

“For me, that shadow was never there,” Joe Calarco says of
“Gypsy” legends. (Calarco’s staging of “Gypsy” opened at Arlington’s Signature
Theatre Dec. 17.) “And I think Sherri” — longtime Signature actress Sherri
Edelen — “got over that very question way before rehearsal.”

Actors in revivable plays from Shakespeare to David Mamet
deal with the issue all the time, of course.

“It’s not about reinventing it,” says Alan Paul, director of
“Forum” at the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Sidney Harman Hall, with Bruce Dow
ringleading the clowning as Pseudolus. “It’s about making it your own. . . . So
much of the evening depends on the charisma of the leads. There are many great
actors, but you can count the number of personalities out there who can fill
the stage with life. I felt that Bruce had that.”

Here, then, are some of the ways to beat the nerves of
tackling an iconic part — or, as the “Forum” lyrics put it, to stay “calm,
controlled, so cool that I’m cold.”

To Calarco, Edelen’s triumphs as Mrs. Lovett in Signature’s
“Sweeney Todd” and as Margaret Johnson in “Light in the Piazza” with the Philadelphia
Theatre Company (winning a Barrymore Award, Philly’s Tonys) made Mama Rose a
natural next hurdle.

“She has that powerhouse voice,” he says, “and she’s a
fearless actress.”

So how do you deal with a long shadow?

“I try not to think about it, for one thing,” Edelen says.
“And I try just to tell the story. The psychology of the story was what was
interesting to me, not Mama Rose, or what a monster she is. I looked into the
‘why’ of the actions.”

“Monstrous” is indeed an idea that clings to Mama Rose, who
thrusts her kids onstage and schleps them through fleabag theaters across the
country.

“I don’t like that word,” Calarco says. “Everything she
does, she does out of love — or she thinks she does. I like her very much.”

If “Gypsy” has a moment of truth for its leading lady — a
signature scene or song that the audience will be waiting for – it’s the big
breakdown number, “Rose’s Turn.” Calarco suggests that there may be scenic
tactics to help illustrate Rose’s madness, but most of it will rest, as ever,
on the performer’s shoulders.

“It is Rose’s show, and that is her soliloquy,” Calarco
says. “Sherri says it’s King Lear, it’s Medea — and it really is.”

Some performers learn parts by listening to recordings, but
Calarco reports that Edelen had this role memorized before the first rehearsal
while steering clear of CDs and YouTube (except, she says, for background on
Gypsy Rose Lee and her family).

“She wants to learn it the way it is on the page,” the
director says. “She’s very pure about that.”

She knows the show, of course: She played one of the
strippers in Signature’s 2001 edition. Yet she says she’s never seen a full
stage production.

“Which is good, isn’t it?” Edelen says. “If people out there
have a preconceived idea, I don’t know what it is.”

‘Forum’

An actor’s first thought about landing one of these
formidable roles?

“I was terrified, because I certainly know I’m nothing like
Zero Mostel,” says Dow. “It was originally written for Phil Silvers. It was
offered to Milton Berle. I am more North American WASP than Borscht Belt
comedian. So there was an element of terror involved.”

All that first hit Dow when he was cast as Pseudolus for a
“Forum” at Canada’s Stratford Festival a few seasons ago. Dow dropped out of
the show early when he suffered a virally induced paralyzed vocal cord; when
the production transferred to Toronto, he alternated with another actor.

The approach was more cartoonish in Toronto, Dow feels, and
is more heartfelt here. “What I hoped I could bring to it was a simple honesty
and earnestness,” he says, adding that vaudeville shtick naturally then gets
plopped on top.

Director Paul is an unabashed fan of the 1996 revival with
Nathan Lane, but he doesn’t think “Forum” is quite like “Gypsy” or “King and
I,” with songs that buffs know cold coming in.

“I think a lot of people know ‘Free,’ people know ‘Everybody
Ought To Have a Maid,’ but they’re not waiting for it like ‘Rose’s Turn,’ ”
Paul says. “So I think Bruce and I were remarkably free from a preconceived
version of it.”

“Zero had a beautiful grotesquerie about him,” Dow says of
the Mostel’s Pseudolus. “And Mr. Lane can have a Snidely Whiplash evil grin,
but I think that is not in my wheelhouse. Grotesque I get. And I happily go
there.”

To YouTube, or not to YouTube?

“I’ll watch whatever’s out there, sure,” Dow says. “But I
think it’s important that I know what’s in my skill set and what isn’t. I’m not
someone who likes to come in to rehearsal prepared. I like to come in and
play.”

Like Edelen, Paul sees Lear in these kinds of roles — the
material is rich, and it won’t be the author’s fault if the show flops. Dow
knows that means some folks will be primed to see things a certain way.

“You have audiences who will want to see Dolly come down the
staircase in a red dress,” he says. “There’s nothing you can do. If you want to
see a live performance of ‘Forum’ starring Zero Mostel, you’re setting yourself
up for a disappointment.”

‘The King and I’

Brynner won a Tony for the 1951 Broadway premiere and an
Oscar for the 1956 film. Then he kept rebranding himself as the king, playing
the role in the 1972 CBS sitcom “Anna and the King” and taking the musical back
to Broadway and on tour into the 1980s.

“Yul Brynner still owns that role,” Waldrop says. “He’ll
always own that role.”

He shaved his head for that role, and therefore so have many
actors ever since. Montalban, best known for playing the Prince in the 1997
ABC/Disney TV version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Cinderella,”
volunteered to shave his head, too. But research indicated that wasn’t how the
mid-19th century king of Siam really looked.

“So that wouldn’t even be about the piece,” Waldrop says.
“That would be about Yul Brynner.”

Along with “Miss Saigon,” “The King and I” is a cornerstone
of the musical theater repertoire for performers with Asian backgrounds.
Waldrop says, “There were certain times in rehearsal when it was really clear
that everyone in the room knew the show better than I did.”

This is the Phillipines-born Montalban’s eighth spin through
the musical, though only his second turn as the petulant king; previously, he
played the young lover Lun Tha. It’s good to be the king, in the thick of the
story all the time, he says — not that he watched other kings and murmured to
himself, “If I ever get my hands on that part . . . .”

For Montalban, the aim seems to be to hit certain marks with
authority, including the king’s physique – and yes, he is often shirtless and
barefoot, though his dark hair is only slightly shaved on the sides and fully
tufted on top. Also pivotal is the climactic waltz with the English
schoolteacher Anna Leonowens (played at Olney by Eileen Ward), “Shall We
Dance?”

“You really have to deliver on that,” the actor says, “the
chemistry that finally blossoms, that longing in the audience for them to get
together.”

Montalban knows that the audience experiences a giant
collective “Yul Brynner” thought bubble the moment he steps onstage. “I have
those first seven seconds of them making all the judgments they want in the
world,” he says. “Then I have the rest of the show to earn my own place in
their attention.”

How effectively it works — well, as Paul says, it boils down
to charisma. But it also depends on how deeply an original is embedded in any
given spectator’s mind.

Montalban tells the story of a gentleman who recently
approached after the show to say he enjoyed the actor’s performance.

The man added, “I would have liked it more if you’d shaved
your head.”